


She’s colour.

by marcelsnaylor



Category: Holby City
Genre: Colours, F/M, Love, date, rosie marcel, so much love, them realising they love one another
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 07:49:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18442211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcelsnaylor/pseuds/marcelsnaylor
Summary: The building up of Flac. I don’t know how to summarise it but I think this is kinda cute and it’s worth the read if you want a happy ending im just saying like it’s so soft and angst and I miss flac xxx





	She’s colour.

“Yes, so tomorrow my elective is at 8, do you fancy scrubbing in?” She asked, walking through the automatic doors at the front of the hospital. The evening was cold, but there was a strange warmth about it. For April though, the weather made sense, it was just after six in the evening, their shifts done and the sun beginning to set. She always parked her car at the front so she only had to take ten steps into work every morning, and the same in the evening. It was a Thursday, her least favourite of all days, but the current setting of the sun and the golden cast that settled made her excited for her drive home. She loved to watch the sun set, nearly as much as she liked waking up early to watch it rise, colours melting into colours and out of colours, all becoming one. It was her favourite thing to do, probably, besides cutting open people’s chests and then fixing them up. 

 

“Sounds like a plan.” He smiled, following her out of the doors. He always parked near the back of the parking lot, his big, old car so far away that it took him minutes to walk into the hospital, the only few minutes of silence he got in a day. Work had been busy, Darwin was holding the most patients and the most surgeries, meaning he’d had to scrub in on them, working late and seeing his kids less and less. He blamed how often he was working on his grief, the fact that it took his mind off Raf. It was partly true, you couldn’t call it a lie, but it wasn’t the reason he worked so much. He could get by with working only three days a week with the salary he was on, his overtime leading him to work throughout the week and most likely the weekend too. It wasn’t the grief though, it wasn’t the pain that he felt when he walked by the lifts - that pain was there all the time, everywhere, so it wasn’t the grief. It wasn’t the patients, god save him - it wasn’t the fucking patients. It might be the clinical lead of Darwin that kept him there, assisting her and spending most of his time with her, but he wasn’t so sure. He tried not to think about it, and so did she. As he walked past her car, saying goodbye, he tried not to think about her. She did the same, lingering slightly at the door of her car so she could watch him walk, only for a few seconds before she pushed any reminder of him out of her head for the evening, only to be faced with him the next day. Gossip had accumulated the ward, will they and won’t they’s crossed verbal paths between doctors and nurses, crossed between wards and departments, but it never got back to them. Adrian Fletcher wasn’t the type of man for gossip, he hated it, the thought of people finding pleasure in his personal business irritated him, so the gossip never got back to him. Jac Naylor, well Naylor never liked to talk, not about relationships, not about anything personal. People were too scared of the surgeon to even mention her non-existent relationship with Mr. Fletcher to her for the fear that she might kill them, bite their heads off and eat them, it seemed like a high probability that she would do something like that. She knew they were talking though, Jac Naylor claimed to know everything, and she wasn’t particularly wrong in that. She ignored it however, distancing herself away from Fletch until they got _too_ close again, the cycle repeating. 

 

The only people who mentioned the sort-of relationship and the sort-of-not relationship was Evie and Sacha. Evie would speak to her dad every night, trying to pry some information about Jac, to see if anything new had happened. Usually he ignored it when he walked through the door, Evie gaging whether they were together or if they weren’t, whether they wanted to or not, rolling his eyes or telling her to mind her own business, and she did. She tried to not persist. Sacha however, Sacha knew Jac inside and out, upside down, the wrong and the right ways round. He’d asked her the moment she walked through the door. They lived together, something that Jac once thought would be a good idea, her best friend sharing her house, yet it turned out to just involve relentless chatter about her failing love life. 

 

“Sacha I swear to God...” she mumbled under her breath as she sat down next to him on the sofa with a cup of tea in her hand. 

“I just want to know!” He sighed, his hands in the air as he surrendered. He pestered her for answers, wanting to know if she’d finally told Fletch how she truly felt. 

“Know what?” She asked, facing him. 

“If you told him?”

“Told him what?”

“You know.”

“Know what?” She knew exactly what , although she’d never even told Sacha how she felt for the fear of it becoming real. If it was real then it would be ruined. If it wasn’t for the fact that Jac and Fletch were friends, she probably would’ve dived in, head first, feet last, and drowned them  both .“Drop it.” She said, pointing her finger at him, warning him. There would’ve been no consequences though if he had continued badgering her and questioning her, she couldn’t stop him. He didn’t continue though, he shut his mouth and kept his thoughts as thoughts, trying not to intrude on her personal life, knowing that he could offer some sort of support, be some type of communication. She sucked at communication, communicating in any sort of way she  royally sucked at. She’d rather ignore than discuss, isolate than converse, she was truly and utterly fucking useless at it. So she did ignore it, pushing any trace of feeling to the back of her mind, closing up and putting up any barrier possible. She didn’t have to do any of that with Sacha, he knew what she was and how she worked, and she was alright with that - he didn’t need to see  all of her because they were friends. Fletch, he wanted to see all of her, if they were to be more than friends he’d  have to see more of her, she wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready for the intrusion, she thought, but there was this tingle in her stomach. It was a tingle that if it lasted any longer it could break down every single wall she’d built up, lead Fletcher straight, show him everything. She wasn’t ready for the intrusion, she didn’t want the intrusion, she thought to herself. The thing with Jac Naylor was, and she knew this, she didn’t know the difference between telling herself the truth and telling herself a lie to hide the truth. So whether she thought that or not, she didn’t know if that was true, she wasn’t one hundred percent convinced, but she wouldn’t let anyone else know that, or think that, not for a second. 

 

Fletch wasn’t entirely sure either, he wasn’t sure where he stood with Jac, convincing everyone else that they were only friends caused him to question the same. He would never ask her, for the fear that she’d say something they both regret, end their friendship, end it all. So he waited and watched, typing out short messages on his phone only to delete them incase she ignored it. It would’ve been a small message like ‘ _hello_ ’, but he didn’t, just in case. He knew what she was like, he knew that everything was on her terms and that’s the way it was. Neither of them truly knew how they felt because that would mean talking about it and neither of them were ready for it. So he sat up at night, wondering if there was a possibility, wondering if there was a feeling, wondering if maybe, just maybe, Jac Naylor felt the same. She did the opposite, she tried to get it out of her head, run away from it, think about a million other things to block his name coming up in her mind. 

 

—

 

“Why are you here so early?” He asked her as he walked to the front of the hospital. His shift didn’t start until half seven, but he had a million things to do and he knew the elective would run over. So he got there at half six instead, walking the few minutes it took from his car to the doors, spotting Jac on the bench outside. “Sunrise?” He asked, turning around to sit next to her. She nodded slightly, rubbing her hands together in the cool breeze of the morning. She had always watched the sun rise, it was just something she did - Emma even runs into her bedroom on occasions so they could watch it together. She was at Jonny’s though, and she would be until next Sunday. A week without Emma was a week where Jac often stayed at the hospital until incredibly late hours and would go back at six in the morning, never liking the silence of her own home. Sacha was either at her house, at work or with his daughter, often he wasn’t that much company. He was spending Saturday and Sunday with his daughter so Jac had planned to just stay at the hospital, they had showers and she always kept spare clothes there. Anything to preoccupy her mind. 

“See you inside?” He asked her, watching her body turn to him and smile slightly, nodding in agreement. She didn’t know what to say, how to say anything to him. So she followed his footsteps inside about half an hour later, her hands freezing and her cheeks red. Her office was pretty much her second home, so much so that she spent more hours there than she did anywhere else. She always kept her office door shut, so when it was open as she walked onto the Darwin Ward, she knew that someone had intruded. There was no one there when she walked in, only a large coffee from Pulses sat on her desk, alone, steaming. She picked it up carefully, wrapping her long fingers around it, the heat tingling her fingers and rushing through her body, slowly, calmly, but with a sense of direct urgency. It was the small things like that, the things he did. The smiles from across the boardroom, his eyebrows raising at comments that caused them both to laugh, him watching her carefully when she spoke to a patient. He did the tiniest of things, the nice things, the caring things, all the things that made Jac want to punch him right in his fucking face. It was these tiny, tiny, _tiny_ things  that got her, caused the tingle, brought his face to the forefront of her mind. It made her wonder, how could he feel the same when she never did anything like that for him. She never bought him coffee, she didn’t listen to anyone but herself, she never did those things, so how the fuck could he feel the same way. Perhaps he didn’t. But he did, it was the smaller things for him too. They were less frequent, perhaps even less noticeable, but they were there. She would look at him from across the ward, nodding at him if he needed to say something out loud, focusing on him when he was making a fool of himself in meetings. Her ability to take control of a situation, her ability to be the situation that she couldn’t control. He felt the same because it wasn’t really about the little things that she did, not for him. It was how she got back up after the death of Jasmine, how she got back up after being shot, after being paralysed, after being poisoned. How she got back up and was prepared to stand up for the rest of her life, by herself, or with someone, he didn’t know. But she’d stand there, hold her ground, get back up. So when she walked into theatre, teaching Frieda a new technique, watching the patient die and then bring them back to life, he couldn’t help but just watch her. She couldn’t help but be grateful for how well he knew her every move, how he paid attention in every operation to what she did, handing her the equipment just before she needed it. 

She couldn’t help but be grateful for the support, no matter how many times she pushed him away after the shooting, ridiculing him, hating him, shouting at him, he was back. He always came back. She didn’t know why, she didn’t know if her feelings for him were just the guilt that she’d accumulated for Raf dying and her being alive. She didn’t know, she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to feel like this about another nurse, although with Fletch it was different. He was just there, he dropped everything for her. She knew he was going on a brunch date, just after the shooting, but when she couldn’t get out of bed for the pain in her back and Sacha wasn’t around, she had phoned Fletch. He cancelled the date and spent the day with Emma, Jac asleep upstairs. He was only going on the date because he knew Jac didn’t feel for him how he did for her, so he had to do something about it. He had to get out there again, only whenever he did that, he hated it. Someone else talking to him in that way, laughing with him, someone who wasn’t  Jac . So he cancelled the date in a heartbeat, never asking for anything in return, never asking for a thank you, not that Jac would’ve so explicitly given him one anyway. So they were grateful for one another, they had established that. 

 

It was so much more than that, though, Fletch thought to himself as he watched Jac take off her gloves, gown and face mask, her hair still tied back and her scrub cap still on. He had to watch Frieda close, all he wanted to do was to go and congratulate the surgeon on the six hour surgery she just performed. That wasn’t the real reason, he just wanted to see her, catch a glimpse of her in the corner of her office, probably looking through files or replying to emails. Something so intensely mundane that it excited him, a soft tingle rushing through his belly into his chest. When he did go and find her though, he found her at her desk, her hair down and behind her shoulders, smiling. It was just after two in the afternoon, there was a low glow through her office at this time, something that made her hair even more vibrant than it normally was. He knocked gently, watching her look up at him and invite him in, looking back down at her computer. 

 

“Do you want some good news?” She asked, pointing to her computer. She looked back at the screen, excited to tell Adrian. She hadn’t told anyone yet, usually she’d be telling someone about her achievement, but she waited for him, waited so that he could be the first one to know, the first one to tell her how proud he was of her. Not that she needed to be reminded of her achievements, but she wanted him to know first, out of everyone in her life, it was  _him._

He stood in front of her desk, watching her scroll down the screen. He wasn’t listening to what she was saying, her words being broken up by her mouth involuntarily turning into a smile. “Come here.” She said, moving her chair towards the computer so that he could fit next to her. She pointed to the screen, looking back around at him as he stared between her and the computer. Her smile was big, her eyes were probably brighter than ever. So he took a second to watch her, looking at what was in front of him. He could only think of colour. To everyone else, Jac Naylor could probably be described as the colour grey. She wasn’t vibrant enough to them to associate her with black, but grey seemed to fit. She was so grey and saturated to them that grey was the only word they could probably muster. She was so untouchable, unthinkable, unable to be around. She was so saturated. To him though, she was colour, he thought. The accumulation of her scars, reds, pinks, oranges, her past, blues and greens, she was every colour to him. She was so vibrant that at times it probably blinded him, he couldn’t get his words out correctly for the fear that he’d say something stupid. Calling her ‘colour’ was odd, it didn’t really make that much sense, but she was. She is. 

“Fletch?” She asked after he didn’t respond, watching him look at her. 

“Is that..?”

“Yeah.” She whispered, looking back at the screen, running her hand through her hair. 

“Dear Ms. Naylor,” He read from the screen, “We would like to congratulate you on winning two separate awards at the NHS awards this year - Best Clinical Lead of a Department and Highest Survival Rates for a Cardiothoracic Department. Thank you for your service to the NHS, in light of these awards we want to offer you a grant to further your department…” His verbalising of the email toned out, his eyes moving down the screen, his hand moving from her chair to her shoulder in excitement and pride. His smile grew to match hers, an impulse to kiss her forehead took over. So he did, his lips pressing softly on her forehead, her heart rising into her throat. He pulled away though, too soon, a little too soon and walked to the door. 

 

“I’m proud of you.” He smiled, watching her look at him. “In celebration do you fancy a drink?” He asked, almost immediately wishing he didn’t say anything. Her smile dropped a little as her lips pursed, focusing on his words. He wished he hadn’t had said anything, he wished so badly that he almost took his words back. 

 

“Yeah.” She smiled, her hands running through her hair. There was a soft silence in the room, neither one of them moving, just looking at one another. Any feeling that they questioned about one another wasn’t a question anymore, more so a fact, a realisation, an understanding. She didn’t dare to say how she felt, she barely dared to think it, but she did, she thought it. He smiled back, reaching for the door, looking at her. She was just colour, in everything he’d been through and was going through, the grey areas and the black splotches that covered the corners of his vision, she was there, a colour, a multitude of different colours that he couldn’t unsee. He didn’t want to, he would paint a picture with her if he could, but he’d rather look at her forever. Her skin, her freckles, her hair, her smile, her laugh. He wanted it all. So did she. 

 

“I’d love to have a drink with you.”


End file.
